Hearne: P&L District Poised to Swipe Cancer Drunkfest from Westport

Ten team members, umpteen pitchers of beer, eight hours. That my friends is the working formula for the upcoming Kansas City-based Crawl for Cancer which for the 13th time goes down on May 13.

The question being, where?

While Crawl for Cancer’s website shows the event going down in Westport, the Midtown party zone appears poised to lose one of its biggest, baddest, drunkest events to its dreaded rival the Power & Light District. That according to sources who say Westport no longer has enough bars to host May 13th event.

Not after the closings this past year of two of the party district’s largest venues, America’s Pub and The Beaumont Club. Two other large Westport anchors – McCoy’s Public House and Kelly’s – have opted out of the crawl over the years. In the case of Kelly’s, reportedly because it thinks the “charity” overserves attendees.

Having attended a number of Crawl for Cancers, I can tell you it’s the biggest public daytime drunk I know of outside of St. Patrick’s Day.

And the Kansas City-based Crawl for Cancer is no stranger to controversy.

In 2009 the Better Business Bureau stripped it of its accreditation because the crawl refused to disclose how much of the money raised actually goes to charity. On top of that, civic leaders in other communities have criticized it for promoting widespread public drunkeness.

A crawl in Lincoln, Nebraska, for example, was cancelled in 2007 over police concerns. And Oklahoma City’s Bricktown entertainment district voted unanimously to pull the plug on Crawl for Cancer in 2010 after “reports the fundraiser had participants urinating from building balconies, jumping into the canal, getting into fights and verbally assaulting families — all in broad daylight,” NewsOK reported. “At 7:30 p.m. that same day, police were called to America’s Pub in Bricktown, where a patron was beaten unconscious by an assailant described as being ‘extremely intoxicated’ and wearing a shirt that read ‘crawl for cancer 2010.’ The victim was hospitalized and the attacker fled from the bar.

“An executive with the Bricktown Hampton Inn reported an “unresponsive” participant was dropped off and abandoned in the hotel lobby. (And) Andrea Griggs, co-owner of Put a Cork in It, reported participants were being loud and foul-mouthed along the Bricktown Canal and some even jumped into the water.”

Some charities have declined to accept Crawl for Cancer donations because of the debaucherous nature of the event.

But back to the situation involving Westport and Power & Light…

“Crawl for Cancer has applied to the Guinness Book of Records to break the record for the World’s Biggest Pub Crawl,” says a source. “And they’re shooting for 10,000 people. The Westport event usually draws around 5,000 people.”

The problem being that without America’s Pub, the Beaumont, Kelly’s and McCoys there’s barely room for the current attendance, let alone doubling it.